Hands-on with the Samsung Series 7 Ultra

Samsung’s Series 9 ultrabooks are some of the thinnest and lightest laptops on the market — and they also offer nice keyboards, trackpads, and all-around performance.

But if you’re looking for a model with more ports, maybe an optical disc drive, and don’t mind going heavier, Samsung offers the Series 5 line of ultrabooks — which are also much cheaper than the Series 9 devices.

Now Samsung also has a new option which offers discrete graphics, a full HD 13 inch touchscreen display, and long battery life. It’s the Samsung Series 7 Ultra which should launch soon for around $1000 and up.

The Series 7 can’t match the Series 9 on size and weight, but it’s still a relatively small laptop measuring 0.7 inches thick and weighing about 3.2 pounds.

But Samsung managed to make room for a 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS touchscreen display and AMD Radeon HD8750M graphics.

There’s also more room around the sides for ports than you’ll find on some ultrabooks. There are 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 UDB 3.0 port, a full-sized HDMI port, and a mini VGA port as well as an SD card slot.

Samsung says you’ll be able to get up to 8 hours of battery life from the Series 7 Ultra, which is good because like many other ultrabooks, the battery isn’t replaceable.

The keyboard layout is pretty much the same on the Series 7 as on the Series 9 I reviewed (and which I’m typing this article on), but the keys have a silver/gray finish rather than black — so fewer people will ask if you’re using a Macbook.

The Series 7 also scores higher in every part of the Windows Experience Index rating than my Series 9 — which isn’t surprising since I’ve got a low-end Series 9 with a 2nd generation Intel Core processor while the Series 7 on display at CES has a 3rd generation chip. But it also appears to have a much faster SSD for storage.

Samsung’s new 13 inch Sereis 7 ultrabook should hit the streets in the coming months.

niagr

I think Samsung has reached the sweet spot between aesthetics and functionality

Tsais

I think they have already reached two sweet spots between the 9 and the 7…

I’m just waiting for the Haswell update, but Samsung is silent.

They are probably not Intel’s most favored vendor, what with all the ARM products they produce… So Sony got new chips first.